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1) All car companies (and, in fact, all industries) are under pressure to minimize waste. This is part of why oil change frequencies are getting longer and longer.

I suspect there are other factors at play, given how extensively BMW advertises its 'free' service as part of why a prospective buyer should choose BMW over Brand X, Y or Z.

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2) I was suggesting that if BMW was ONLY interested in cutting corners, one way to do that would be to design an engine that needed less oil so they could spend less on raw materials in both the product and maintenance of cars.

True up to a point. Toyota probably took the reduced engine oil capacity concept to the extreme and got bit hard (class action lawsuit re. oil sludge). Now, Toyota seems to be specifying 5,000 mile oil and filter change intervals (which IMO is moving the pendulum in the other direction).

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On the larger theme of recycling, keep in mind that is not a zero sum game. Recycling is better than landfill, but it always consumes energy and there is never anywhere close to 100% recovery of the involved materials.

From a policy perspective, more energy expended in recycling seems to be better than used oil being incinerated or landfilled (AZ and TX excepted due to secessionist tendencies).